As expected, Facebook at a press conference today announced that Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service it snapped up earlier in the year, now lets you record, upload and share short video clips with your followers or the web at large.

An accompanying update to the Instagram mobile app with video capability has just been released, featuring a brand new camera icon. You can optionally soup up your recording with a bunch of cinematic filters made specifically for Instagram videos. When done, share your work on Instagram like you would do with photos and hope it goes viral…

To get to the camera recording, you first have to tap the Camera icon at the bottom of the Instagram app and then tap the video recording icon to switch from camera to video.

Like in Twitter’s Vine, recording a clip requires entails pressing and holding the button in the Instagram app. Clips can be anywhere between 3-15 seconds long so lift your finger off the button to stop recording.

There are also thirteen video filters to swipe through, with effects being applied in real-time. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote in a blog post that posting a video also lets you select your favorite scene from what you’ve recorded as your cover image, a poster frame of sorts.

And if you’re on an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, a Cinema feature will automatically stabilize a shaky video after you take it. To disable stabilization (it’s on by default), tap the shaky camera icon.

Keep in mind that video requires an iPhone 3GS device or newer running iOS 5.0 or later or an Android 4.1 or later smartphone.

Uploaded videos appear in feed and others can see them through either the Instagram mobile app or on your web profile, which is viewable in any web browser. In order to limit videos and photos to your approved followers only, just set your profile visibility to private and you’ll be fine.

It’s unclear whether the video uploading capability will be available through the web interface.

According to a help document, you can only share videos on Instagram that you record from the app, which is a shame. Another downer: you also can’t tag people in your Instagram videos. And no, you can’t embed Instagram videos in web pages either.

Facebook also said at the conference that Instagram now has 130 million active users, an improvement over 100 million active users it reported in February 2013. An astounding sixteen billion photos have been shared on Instagram, the company said.

The service is currently seeing an average of one billion likes each day.

Instagram is available free from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store for Android.

Vine has better video control for rapid start and stop. Instagram fail.

billypuntove

how exactly did you measure this? I asked because I just tested the app and it’s exactly the same, only on instagram it’s a button and on Vine it’ the screen. It feels exactly the same but you can see what you’re recording completely on instagram, Not slower to start and stop at all.
Let me know.

My vine is Zach Krase follow me and look at the second to last vid I posted, try doing something like that on Instagram let me know how that works out for you

Markus Hudobnik

Mine works fast on my iphone 5

John

Oh MAN SUCH A FAIL

Mohammad Ridwan

So this is the “product” that Facebook held a press conference to unveil today ? This was their “big idea” ?

Omar D. Plumey

Nice.

Zaidan Umar

Open your eyes and read the article!

Victor

What a ripoff now it’s considered new???

Gorgonphone

great

Roger Riekki

Course Facebook just HAS to copy Vine…

Biken Dangol

Facebook,the new samsung of Video World.

Vine already did it !

Malan Raja

Expect to see more food! only now, you get to see people actually eating it!

Sargon Mikho

I’m not sure this is a good idea. I’ve never looked at a picture of someone’s dinner and thought, “If only I could hear this.”

iPhoneFuzeBlog

I really don’t know how to feel about this. It sounds as though Facebook are really trying to compete against Twitter/Vine’s capabilities, but I’m kind of a huge Vine Fan and user, and to be honest I’m kinda angry that Instagram are trying to “copy”. And yes, I already know that Vine wasn’t the first video-sharing app, but I think that Vine should stay as a social video network, and Instagram as a social photo network.

therealjjohnson

Mine doesn’t work. I can tell its a video but it never plays. I restarted, respringed, deleted it, downloaded it again and still no luck. I’ve had people check the video i uploaded and they can see it but i can see no videos on my phone. I wonder if its because of my jailbreak. Any suggestions?

Tony Trenkle Jr.

I have the EXACT same problem! I can record the video but cant play back any of them and I’m jailbroken too. Have you found a solution to this yet?

therealjjohnson

Mines started working this morning. It was after I synced my phone with my computer though. Not sure if that played a role or not

Tony Trenkle Jr.

Hmm alright I’ll have to do that when I get home tonight. Hopefully thats the issue.

No pre-recorded video addition, you need to instantly record video from instagram.. 🙁

Guest

I am not in favor of this at all. It always seemed to me like Instagram was kind of clean from things that other social networks are full of. I think sticking with pictures would have been a better move.

Josh Coop

I would be in favor of this if people would actually use it for interesting things. So far all I have seen is 15 second selfies.

Markus Hudobnik

I thought it was going to be bad, but my friends aren’t abusing it like they did with Vine. They, so far, are keeping their twerking videos to vine and their more sophisticated and artistic videos to instagram.